“The opening day dawns bright and clear, and every one jubilantly follows the call of the cabmen, until the town itself seems half deserted. On the grounds bands boom, marshals gallop, and crowds pour through and around the buildings. Within one of these, merchants display pipes and pianos, furniture and furnaces, hardware and haberdashery, shoes and sewing-machines, carpets and candy, in apparently endless array.
“On an upper floor the household department demands appreciation for two thousand four hundred and twenty-four glasses of jelly, six hundred and fifty-one jars of pickles, three hundred and thirty cakes, and eighty-nine specimens of homemade soap. Nearby in the department of fine arts are paper flowers, worsted mottoes, six hundred and fifteen pieces of embroidery, one hundred and forty-two cushions, four hundred and forty-three drawings and paintings, and one hundred and ten curiosities and relics, mostly ‘over one hundred years old.’ Among the latter the palm is borne by six cocoanut-shell baskets and a tray of seventeen-year locust shells.
“Elsewhere are many worthy flowers, shrubs, and trees; fruits, vegetables, and grains—celery a yard tall, pumpkins a yard wide, and forty-seven varieties of beans. The pavilions and grounds devoted to machinery present a bewildering array of ploughs, planters, cultivators, reapers, and stackers; of threshers, separators, huskers, shellers, cutters, and grinders; of engines and pumps, saws and mills, and of all things after their kind.
“Every domestic animal, too, after its kind, seems to be represented in countless pens and stalls, until one tarries only long enough to sign the Poultry Fanciers’ demand for a new building and to be grateful for the railroad congestion that has delayed many other exhibits, and then departs, resolutely undeflected by the charms of the Midway, the miniature railway, and the innumerable ice-cream, sausage, and popcorn stands.
“By the second day it is a commonplace that the exhibition is the greatest ever given; everybody begins to count it nearly half over, and a few acknowledge that they wish it were. The cabmen complain of trolley car competition, and a sight-seeing automobile decides that its license is too high to allow it any profit. Lady visitors complain that there are not enough seats on the grounds, that admission to the grandstand is increased to fifty cents, and that the classification of the fancy work department is years behind the vogue. The judges of jellies and the connoisseurs of cakes are prostrated after their investigations into the merits of the two thousand four hundred and twenty-four and three hundred and thirty specimens to which they have submitted their respective tastes.
“On Thursday, however, the third and, by tradition, the greatest day, enthusiasm and optimism return under the stimulus of the largest crowds the town has ever seen. Nobody can count the people, and estimates of their number are as inflated and soaring as the great balloon, which finally does its duty handsomely. Nine trolley cars are counted in the square at one time; there are eighty passenger coaches in the railroad yards, and one livery-stable entertains two hundred and thirty-four visiting horses! People who did not expect them receive premiums, and the indefatigable Poultry Fanciers have a parade and a banquet, at which they announce their building as assured.
“On Friday, the final day, the blessing continues to brighten as it takes its flight. The Fair Association smilingly admits about eight thousand dollars profit, entertains itself, and its live stock and machinery exhibitors, at luncheon, promises the Poultry Fanciers their new building, and utters mysterious hints concerning a great aquarium for next year. Nothing mars the growing satisfaction save that some unknown miscreant drops a lighted match into an entrance ticket box and burns up approximately a bushel of tickets.
“Such are some of the phenomena of the county fair,” concluded Professor Maturin. “They promise much to any proper scientific and literary exposition. Here, as everywhere else, we need only a little more information and a little more intelligence to transform our contemporary superficiality into a realization of life that is, at the same time, strong and fine.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.